Contingent of soldiers returns to Hawaii

The first 260 soldiers of Hawaii's 25th Combat Aviation Brigade returned to Wheeler Army Airfield yesterday from Iraq.

They are among the brigade's 2,400 soldiers who deployed last summer in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The rest are scheduled to return next month.

In 2004 the unit, part of the 25th Infantry Division, spent a year in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The brigade is being replaced in Iraq by the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Riley, Kan.

FULL STORY »

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
About 260 members of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade returned from Iraq yesterday and were greeted by family and friends at Wheeler Army Airfield. Candy Hanson kissed her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Keith Hanson.

When they finally did, the first 260 members of Hawaii's 25th Combat Aviation Brigade to return from Iraq made up for lost time, hugging loved ones and then hustling off on their 72-hour passes.

Waiting for Spc. Zachary Moser, 22, was his wife, Candice, and son Brayden, 1.

Brayden was born Aug. 25, after his father had deployed to Iraq. Still, Brayden took right to his father's arms.

"They talked on the phone," Candice Moser explained.

While in Iraq, soldiers were able to contact family members in Hawaii through the Internet and video conferences set up by the military. Some soldiers also pooled their money to buy satellite dishes for their own telephone networks, said Lt. Col. Gregory Baker, brigade deputy commander.

Since the summer of 2006, members of the brigade have been conducting combat, combat support and service support missions, logging more than 153,000 flight hours. And that number jumps to more than 190,000 with missions flown by unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.

Brigade crews also transported more than 5,000 tons of cargo and more than 145,000 people.

There were losses as well.

Sgt. Nimo W. Tauala, 29, of Aiea, died March 17 in Muqdadiyah in what the Pentagon called a noncombat-related injury. He was a 1995 graduate of Kaimuki High School.

First Lt. Keith Heidtman, 24, of Norwich, Conn., and his co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Theodore U. Church, 32, of South Point, Ohio, were killed when their OH-58D Kiowa helicopter crashed after encountering enemy fire north of Baghdad. They were assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment.

"I got pretty close to them," said Moser, a supply specialist with the unit who knew both pilots. "We played games, poker games."

They make up the advance team of mostly maintenance personnel who will be preparing to overhaul the brigade's aircraft as soon as they return from Iraq, said Baker. He said the aircraft and most of the rest of the brigade's 2,400 soldiers will return in the first half of next month.

They will be replaced in Iraq by the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Riley, Kan.